


I Am A Leaf On The Wind

by LisaDuncansTwin



Category: Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Set after movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LisaDuncansTwin/pseuds/LisaDuncansTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe takes it one day at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am A Leaf On The Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Patt (PattRose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PattRose/gifts).



> You wanted me to write something...
> 
> Originally written and betaed in 2006 by Mary, left unaltered.

It was … His smile. His laugh. His eyes. His hands. The touch that made her feel more like a woman and less like a soldier. The way he could soften her rough edges with just a quirk of his eyebrow. These were Zoe’s companions every night when she went back to their quarters, her... their... the bed. His presence all around her as she undressed, taking off Zoe the soldier, Zoe the fighter, and slipped into Zoe the wife, Zoe the woman, Zoe the... widow.

She slept in one of his shirts, one with a horrible tropical print, like so many of his were. It still smelled like him, a little more like her every day, but still, it was his arms that wrapped around her while she cried. In their bed, in his shirt, that was the only place she allowed herself to feel his loss.

She saw the way they looked at her, the way they wanted to say things she didn’t want to hear. Mal, with his grief, saying more with his eyes than he could ever put into words. Jayne, with his grunts, finding no way to say what he felt, not knowing how to, so he didn’t. Inara, with her gentle hand on Zoe’s shoulder for the split second before Zoe shrugged it off. Simon, with his practiced look of compassion, not that he didn’t feel anything, but more that he wasn’t used to showing anything else in the face of loss. River, with her emotional rollercoaster, smiling at one turn, crying at the next. But it was Kaylee, with her sense of stability and family overturned that fractured Zoe’s calm exterior more than most. The way she could see Kaylee struggle to say something comforting but it was always the wrong moment, or the wrong word, or even just the wrong person she was trying to share it with.

Zoe grieved alone. For Wash, with Wash. She grieved where she was a woman and a wife and a lover and now, alone. Again. Her soul shattered. He was gone in an instant, right before he eyes. He was there one moment and gone the next. She tried to console herself with the fact that she had been there, that he hadn’t been alone, and it comforted some, but... he was still gone. Gone with seven little words she heard every hour of every day. Words she woke up hearing, and thinking he was still there, would roll over to his empty place in their bed, and have to close her eyes to hold it together. Words she heard as she fell asleep, remembering the warmth of him beside her, his little snore, the giggles in his sleep, his cold feet pressed against her warm ones.

“I am a leaf in the wind.”

And with every landing on a new world, Zoe looked for him. She felt him in every gentle breeze, and looked. And when she saw the trees, and saw the leaves, she felt her armor give a bit, and felt him with her even more.

“I am a leaf in the wind.”

He was the wind. He was the tree. He was the leaf. He always was, he still was.

The end.


End file.
